IBM Rational Publishing Engine V1.3 Automates and Standardizes Document Generation
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IBM United States Software Announcement 214-448, dated October 28, 2014 IBM Rational Publishing Engine V1.3 automates and standardizes document generation Table of contents 1 Overview 4 Publications 2 Key prerequisites 4 Technical information 2 Planned availability date 6 Ordering information 2 Description 6 Terms and conditions 4 Program number At a glance IBM(R) Rational(R) Publishing Engine V1.3 automates document generation from Rational solutions and third-party applications. It allows you to easily create documents for: • Ad-hoc use • Formal and informal reviews • Contractual obligations • Standards compliance Rational Publishing Engine V1.3 delivers a number of key usability improvements around existing capabilities to further enhance the practitioner experience to build templates and execute them to document delivery. Additionally, focus is given to some consumability improvements within the Document Studio function to help improve template creation with an important feature delivery around the new template debugger. Through the debugger team, users can now more easily build up a standard template and resolve and issues before going through the export process. There are also marked improvements to the output formatting that help the systems engineer and document controller with better cross references, tables, figures, text orientation, and new template elements to make the specification output more consistent with that which is displayed on the screen. For improved security and authentication consistency, there are stepped up features and improvements to support digitally signed templates and output documents. This release of Rational Publishing Engine delivers advanced support for reporting and document generation on a version-aware projects. Rational Publishing Engine document specifications are enhanced with the addition of a data source property that now identifies the configuration that will be used for document generation. Rational Publishing Engine lets the user to set the value of the configuration URI through a visual wizard and quickly get the output version required for delivery from the latest project data. Overview Creating documents and keeping them current can be time consuming and error prone. Documents can even become obsolete by the time you have finished writing them. Despite this, documents are the preferred and most effective way to IBM United States Software Announcement 214-448 IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation 1 communicate information across disciplines, both internally and across contractual boundaries. Rational Publishing Engine automates document generation from disparate applications to help improve efficiency and process maturity, and reduce the effort to meet internal, customer, or regulatory requirements for deliverable documentation. It automates document creation for many purposes, which include ad-hoc use, formal reviews, contractual obligations, and standards compliance. Version 1.3 provides automates and standardizes document generation for organizations' systems and software engineering data that is based on sets of standard templates while it avoids high costs that are associated with the risks inherent in a manual process. In this newest release, project teams and document controllers can look forward to enhanced automation, formatting, and performance. • Usability improvements for existing capabilities. Focuses on further simplification, consistency, and intuitiveness for higher used functions by the report designer and report engine. • Output format improvement. Improves the expectation of systems engineers and document controllers with cross references, tables, figures, text orientation and new template elements. • Template studio consumability. Some consumability improvements within the Document Studio help improve template creation including the new template debugging capability. • Security-authentication consistency. Gives better security and authentication consistency with improved features and improvements to support digitally signed templates and output documents. • BiDi support (simple). Supports better globalization for languages that read from right to left. • Performance improvements. Avoids repeated authentication and improves the caching module information used with Rational DOORS(R). With Rational Publishing Engine, you can enhance your team's productivity and achieve a much higher return on investment because you spend less time on the tedious and manual tasks of creating documents and keeping them up to date. Instead, you can focus on your primary business objectives. Key prerequisites Supports LinuxTM and WindowsTM operating systems. For details, refer to the Hardware requirements and Software requirements sections. Planned availability date October 31, 2014 Description Rational Publishing Engine is a document-generation application that automatically extracts data from your disparate repositories and creates elegant multi-format documents. Simple document creation Rational Publishing Engine is designed for ease of use. You do not have to change the way you work to enjoy the benefits of the Rational Publishing Engine. You have the option of generating documents directly from: IBM United States Software Announcement 214-448 IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation 2 • Your preferred Rational application, which includes Rational Focal PointTM for Portfolio Management • Rational DOORS or Rational Requirements Composer for Requirements Management • Rational Rhapsody(R), Rational Rhapsody Design Manager, or Rational Software Architect Design Manager for Architecture Management – Rational Team ConcertTM for Change and Configuration Management – Rational Quality Manager for Quality Management • A non-Rational application that uses APIs, which are provided with Version 1.3 to configure and document specifications • Rational Publishing Engine Launcher Generating documents directly from the Rational Publishing Engine V1.3 is done through the Launcher, which supports starting a selection from Central Management's repository of shared designs. Prompts are then generated for run- time variables, which could consist of drop-down lists of pre-defined static values or dynamic values that are based on the data source and text input values. Features delivered with this release enable team members to schedule reports for reliable, on-time production in order to meet standard development deadlines. There is now less of a need to use scripts for much of the reporting process. The function is now built into Publishing Engine as part of the product. Productivity and flexibility in designing high-quality, compliant documents Extract data from a single source or from multiple sources while Rational Publishing Engine ensures that you get compliant, high-quality documents in MicrosoftTM Word, PDF, HTML, or XSL-FO and with complete flexibility in document style. Rational Publishing Engine allows you to effectively present your extracted data with document features, such as richly formatted text, images, OLEs, tables, figures and captions, hyperlinks, and tables of contents. Rational Publishing Engine V1.3 provides several editing and new debugging aids that will increase productivity of report designers: • Multi-template editing with full support of copying and pasting queries and data- related elements to enhance re-use of designs' custom aspects. • Advanced search capabilities to locate elements within a template or entries within a schema reduce navigation cycles. • Format management between hosting templates and embedded template or snippet and property modification for multi-selected objects enhance format consistency with less effort. • Error message filtering and data source preview to isolate problems or unexpected results. Scripting can be included directly within the template and can be embedded from an external file sourced from a central management shared repository. With the sharing of complex data structures between script expressions and the ability to manipulate data in JavaScriptTM, designs are simplified with increased control in the format of generated data. Rational Publishing Engine continues to include sample design artifacts with guidelines that help you get up and running quickly. Design the content and format of your documents with an easy-to-use, intuitive interface designed with user- friendly features such as drag and drop and preview capabilities. High-performance document generation Rational Publishing Engine is designed for speed, agility, and scalability. Capabilities such as parallel processing have enhanced document generation performance beyond that provided by Telelogic DocExpress and Rational SoDA(R), which ensure that quality documents are delivered on time. IBM United States Software Announcement 214-448 IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation 3 Program number Program number VRM Program name 5724-X79 1.3 IBM Rational Publishing Engine Offering Information Product information is available via the Offering Information website http://www.ibm.com/common/ssi Publications The IBM Publications Center portal is located at http://www.ibm.com/shop/publications/order The Publications Center is a worldwide central repository for IBM product publications and marketing material with a catalog of 70,000 items. Extensive search facilities are provided. A large number of publications are available online in various file formats, and they can